Finance In The Classroom Paycheck Math: Fill & Download for Free

School teachers are poorly paid because they are paid through the financial capabilities of the locales they serve. Because those finances are fumed by local taxes, the pay scales are relative to where they teach.Those paying the taxes feel empowered over the teachers to remind them that they pay the teachers salaries, so humble down, teachers. They don’t think too highly of teachers who remind them that teachers also pay into those salaries and you get what you pay for, monetary wise.The disrespect comes from the image that many people have of teachers as glorified baby sitters who have lots of time off, more than the “regular” workforce. The myth people believe is that teachers-work only during the contract day of when students are on the premises-get paid holidays of a week for Christmas holidays, a week or Easter/spring break, and 2–3 months off for the summer, all while receiving a paycheck.What they don’t understand is that teachers are paid only for a specific number of contract days of the school year, but can receive their paycheck spread out over the 365 day span. Also, teachers put in hours before school and after school and weekends with planning, meetings, parent conferencing on the parents time schedule, as well as grade papers and reports in hard copy as well as online, as well as keeping up with the latest research findings and grindings in education, science, and math, as well as reading children’s literature in order to better advise students in those areas. There is also the mindset of teachers that never gets turned off when they see “stuff’ in their travels to wherever that they can use in the classroom… Don’t forget the teacher improvement seminars for credentialing updates, and other coursework that keeps the teachers involved in the education process. Ah yes, they also have to produce lesson plans for diverse learning styles, which amounts to individualized lesson plans and a common core type plan that has the offshoots of the individualized accommodations for each student.What about the digital learning online? Teachers also spend time exploring new and different websites that facilitate the learning process for children, and have to test out each website they select to use for quality of material, cost effectiveness, flexibility of structure in the online presentations, timing of the anticipated use of the websites per child. That is time consuming.Then there is the periodic observational reporting for students that are in specialized programming for behavioral issues, creating a dosier for the report receiver to understand how the child is functional in the classroom environment, stimuli for positive response, as what triggers negative reactions for a specified period of time. The report is essential for upcoming investigations on behalf of the child in a meeting with the child’s behavioral advisors, and again with the parents and the parent advocates. Those meetings can last from 1 hour up to 4 hours. Meanwhile, you have to have lesson plans for the substitute in the classroom to be able to follow and to keep the students involved and on task interested. This gets a little exacerbating and exasperating when you have 7–8 students who have certifiable behavioral issues and are mainstreamed. The language in the report has and needs to be clinical observation language, which tends to be difficult for many teachers to do unless they have had that type of training for reporting.The least respected teachers are the elementary school teachers. For some reason unknown to mankind, there is more respect for teachers who teach other than elementary school. But it is in the elementary school that the formative years of habits of mind are essentially addressed positively so that the latter years of school beyond elementary are better fulfilled and are more fulfilling. I have worked in schools with a classroom population of 43 per classroom ( get #44 and the school is required to hire another grade level teacher so that you can split the class in half.), and as few as 17.But either way, the time spent on addressing students’ academic needs was the same, and even more with more students to work with.Before retiring, I stopped taking work home, and spent more time at the school building to get the work done and go home empty handed. My day started at 7:30 AM with the students coming in at 8AM, leaving at 2:45; but I leave for a 3o minute break to the coffee shop, and resume the behind the scenes works from 4pm-10pm, sometimes until 2AM when crunching numbers to ascertain where the students are on the “progress scale” for school reporting. Home by 2:45AM, up again by 5AM to get ready to hit the road to arrive by 7:30 AM before the school buses roll in. That’s while leaving all work to be done at the school. Yes, I was not alone, had other teaching buddies doing the same, and in different schools.Oh and did I mention the school community gatherings and shows we were expected to show up at, as a way to show support for the school and our students, and their parents…..Yes, teachers are disrespected by many professionals in other fields because our pay is so low comparatively speaking, and because they probably had teachers who clocked in and clocked out, showed lots of movies, gave a lot of worksheets, and essentially baby-sat, also had helicopter parents who required the teacher give their child an A for being present and not tearing the place down. But the for the rest of us… well the beat goes on. There are teachers and there are teachers.Then when we retire, our pay gets cut down by 2/3’s. Talk about preplanning for that as essential….preplan on the time left or just call in sick,… but wait, you have to have lesson plans that a sub can read and maybe follow. I once had a sub who couldn’t find the lesson plans front and center on the desk. The principal also claims she couldn’t find them either. Go figure.Hope that answers your question.

Speaking as a Republican former teacher in Oklahoma, I think I got this one.First of all, I have no idea why Republicans are being singled out in this conversation specifically, as Republican policy has little to nothing to do with the problem. Every problem in a red state can’t be nailed to Republicans as bipartisanship on the state level is much more common. Education is one such example, as the education sector is heavily blue, even for a red state. And many issues aren’t even partisan at all. That doesn’t even address that the real problems for Oklahoma have little to nothing to do with politics, but the economy. Speaking as a former Oklahoma school teacher, here’s the real problem.Shale oil.Confused? That’s because there are no such things as simple solutions in a complex and dynamic world. The reason that shale oil is to blame for most of Oklahoma’s current misfortunes is that evolution in the oil industry has gutted Oklahoma’s finances. How? It’s actually because of the great success in technological innovation surrounding shale. A very brief summary is that two innovations, hydraulic fracturing and horizontal drilling allowed oil to be pumped out of reserves once thought too expensive for profit until only about the last decade.Now, you might be aware of images like this one to demonstrate the process, but they are misleading. How? Because there is never just one pipe. In reality, there would be maybe dozens of pipes jutting out in all directions. This was beautiful for the Oklahoma economy because someone had to build all that, truck all that, and it was really labor intensive. That meant we had a lot of taxes coming from the oil industry beyond just the proceeds of the sale of oil. But then shale did what competitive industries do… they got smarter. They started drilling down to one central location, which served as a hub for all the pipes that would be built. Add in that you can now drill far longer from a central access point and few things happen.By becoming so much more efficient in processes, as in massively, massively efficient, it resulting in two things: the United States is currently experiencing an energy boom, but… the market for all industries supporting the actual drilling up the oil collapsed. It’s weird, because we are technically in the middle of this boom in oil’s production, but the actual thing that was taxed, income on all the industries that supported the oil, is withering as we’re seeing those jobs disappear due to simple better business practices.That is what was important to Oklahoma. Our people are the ones who did the work and we did the manufacturing. That was great for us. When there were fewer jobs being created by the shale industry that sent a ripple throughout the Oklahoma economy. Not just a ripple, but a tidal wave.I say this a former Oklahoma teacher. Yes former, I left specifically because I had better opportunity as a writer than as a teacher in Oklahoma. My wife is still a teacher, so the crisis hits us hard. But speaking rationally, I can’t blame my principal or the school board for problems that are happening a mile under our feet and all over the state. I want to be angry, but there is just no one to blame on this one. Well, maybe someone.Damn you scientists and engineers!Seriously, though, the situation is such that Oklahoma isn’t facing a teacher crisis, but a tax crisis. Simply, you can’t complain about Oklahoma teachers not having enough money when Oklahoma doesn’t have enough money. Could some reshuffling be done, basically cannibalize some programs to support the monster that is public education? Sure, but which parks do you want to close? What infrastructure do you want to cancel? What welfare do you want to cut? Who do you want to lay-off? Sure, we could do that. I’m sure that in some places we should, but this is not just a teacher crisis. Oklahoma just doesn’t have money. The article listed for this question also mentioned our Highway Patrol and Prisons in dangerously underfunded situations. Just sayin’.I want to be fair, teaching in Oklahoma is horrible and it does have challenges other industries don’t have. I’ll go into details of that at the bottom, but just know that the hours are murder and the conditions are impossible, especially for new teachers. I’m saying that as someone who was deployed twice to Iraq with the US Marines. The resources aren’t there, and the struggle is mostly invisible to parents and the community. But the reason that it is called a teacher crisis and not a statewide budget crisis is because teachers are the largest and most organized publicly paid collective in the state, as teachers are in most states. You’d be surprised how powerful left leaning teachers unions can be even in red states like Oklahoma. Plus teachers always get to pull on the heart strings by saying that every funding issue involved with schools is “for the kids”. At some point you have to say, “No it isn’t. If it was, you’d make smarter decisions with where the money goes. Instead, the only things anyone talks about are raises for teachers that can’t be fired and who constantly turn over kids who fail in the subjects they teach while new teachers flee to neighboring states due to poor working conditions.” Sorry, but teachers can be manipulative and dishonest, just like any other industry.Actually, no. That isn’t fair. There is a lot of manipulation going on, but readers need to understand what teachers in Oklahoma go through.You’ve heard about how we don’t have books. It’s sort of a cliche at this point, but you need to know what it is like to literally not have classroom books. It forces teacher to create the entire curriculum from scratch. You’re probably thinking that that is great, it’s what they’re paid to do — teach kids. But you’d be incorrect. At least you’d be incorrect in that it robs them of how they teach. Imagine taking a crane away from a construction crew and telling them that now that they have to install the steel beams by hand, now they are really building that building. What teachers really do is that they work as part of their team, be it all the teachers in their grade, with principals, or with a department coordinator (usually a senior teacher in charge of all of one subject like Math for the whole district) and line out what the curriculum will be for the year. Then they purchase a set which aligns with the needs and strategy of the school. These sets include student and teacher books with work and assessments. I want you to understand that doesn’t just make their jobs easier; it makes them possible. Otherwise, you end up doing what my wife does…For four years, she spent hours, upon hours, upon hours searching the internet either on Pinterest or TeachersPayTeachers (like Etsy but teachers sharing assignments they created) for assignments and modules to allow her to teach some subject she has to teach that week. Note that this means she has to spend her own money for the curriculum, which is not holistic or integrated in any way, but this is what happens when the school doesn’t buy it for you. Then she has to print them off. The only other thing she could do is to literally write a book herself. I’m a professional writer now, and that’s really hard. To do that on top of being a full time teacher… with a family? You must be joking. Either way, she is still going to have no books to work from other than what she prints out herself. Oh, but wait. There was paper rationing this year, and when all teachers are doing what my wife is doing… that means they have nothing to teach their kids with! Frankly, that paper rationing started a minor revolt this year and the superintendent buckled. #Okteacherproblems.(Not an endorsement for Drew Edmondson)But what about one-to-one technology? (That’s teacher parlance for tablets for every kid.) As you can expect, that’s a massive initial investment, but then you have them. Well, still not problem solved. As of yet, there are no good replacements for the complete set of textbooks that follow a clear progression through the academic year in an app format. What we have are really bad multimedia programs that the kids can click through in about an hour with clever visuals and a few quizzes, but nothing with the scope and depth of actual classroom books. We also have a sea of inane games that very vaguely improve their basic math skills and a few very good communication tools to keep parents and teachers talking. Those seriously are great (Class Dojo FTW!), but in all honesty, a teacher can also use Class Dojo with just her phone. So really the tablets are massive expenditures that allow teachers to say, “Go to this YouTube video then take the quiz I made in Kahoots.” Simply, there is nothing yet which replaces the text books or enables teachers like the books, unless the teachers themselves basically just build a curriculum from scratch again. At least this time they won’t need paper.So teachers have the burden of not only teaching, but also creating all curriculum, which they may or may not have the resources to act upon, which is already impossible, but whatever. Now factor in another problem… the testing.Teachers teach to the test. It’s a fact. They don’t teach so that your kids understand the material. They teach so that they don’t get fired for having low test scores. Now how in the name of goodness could teachers be fired for test scores during a teaching crisis? Because schools lose even more funding if they get low test scores. Is this fair? No. It isn’t fair to judge a student’s entire year based on their performance on a single day. By the same token, it’s socioeconomically impossible to find two identical schools with the same balance of needs, same population, same distribution of wealth, same ethnic balancing, or the same anything. So assuming that you can stack the test scores of one school against the other and think it determines the value of their teachers?Fine, okay. We have to somehow ensure that some standards are met.But…The big problem with the test are that the standards they based upon are always changing. In Oklahoma, the tests are aligned to the OAS standards. Or rather, the revised OAS standards. Two years ago it was unironically called the PASS skills, and before that, we were doing Common Core. You see, the standards on which teachers are expected to teach are revised nearly every single year. Why? Because Oklahoma voters are pissed that kids are failing, but they don’t understand the problem. They think nothing is being done, so the most politically expedient thing to do is issue out new standards, because apparently, people assume the old standards aren’t working, but mostly just to look like they are earning their paycheck. The problem is that a change as big as this would require at least five years, maybe a minimum of three, for all the teachers to adapt to it.The standards are killer, because it effectively limits what you can teach, as almost nothing aligns to them, and forces teachers to throw out everything they used the year before and start from scratch, because if it doesn’t align with Oklahoma Education Standards, it’s out. And something so sad it’s funny… if you actually work in a school that can afford books… you have to throw them out too… because they absolutely won’t align to whatever new standards were cooked up in Oklahoma City by non-educators working for political interests (including you lefties).I want you to imagine yourself as a teacher. You go to work every day, but then you work hours every night to prepare for next week too. (Frick, I haven’t even mentioned the hours of her life lost with grading papers by hand!) Now, it would be nice if you could use that time you invested into next year, right? No. That’s not how it works. You start over every time there is a major set of reforms. In my wife’s five years as an elementary school teacher, they have reformed the standards three times. Remember, we’re asking a 22 year old new teacher currently building a textbook from scratch from activities she found on freaking Pinterest to throw it all away next year! All the nights she’s put into making her own curriculum… gone. You don’t have that at your job. You get to refine your processes year to year and develop best practices that make sailing the ship a breeze. Not for Oklahoma teachers. Here, everyone is a first year teacher, even if they have been teaching for decades.This creates a chaotic work environment. Hell, it creates a terrible life. Look, I know a lot of teachers who would be happy to work for the pay we get. Expenses in Oklahoma are low. It’s possible to have a higher quality of life here with less pay. But it isn’t worth it to have low pay and a chaotic life. Most new teachers wash out, which is criminal as most are fine teachers, but can’t handle the overwhelming nature of bureaucratic mess they have to deal with. So they either become refugees in Texas or Arkansas, or do like a friend of mine and sell coffee.And now you know why many teachers never marry, because who has time to date? Actually, that’s not funny either, as one teacher explains: I cannot be both a good mother and a good teacherWhat do my Republican bones say to do about that one?Obviously, cut the damned regulations! Cut the tests. Stop screwing the standards. In fact, cut them altogether for a while. Honestly, give teachers a break for five freaking years so that they all want to flee the state and leave only the worst behind. Make it the job of the principals to decide who is a good educator for a while. It can’t honestly be as bad as what we have now. I say that honestly, it will do good. Will it improve the pay that teachers receive? Not a bit, but in Oklahoma, it will make their lives not suck so much. And teaching is a rewarding profession. I know, I miss it, but you can’t make no money, work long hours, and have a terrible life. It’s just too much. Deregulation.That said, focusing just on the teachers misses the diagnosis. It’s a statewide problem. I honestly live in terror of what our security situation is like if it is as bad for the prison system and other state offices if it is as bad as it is for the teachers. Teachers are the most obviously symptom of a much bigger series problem, but the hollowing out of our most important industry is the cause. We simply don’t have enough jobs in the Oklahoma economy to support our government, which includes the schools.Now, speaking as a Republican, there are a few things we can try. There is deregulation. Sure, that will help teachers not hate their lives so much, but won’t actually solve the budget problems. I mentioned cannibalizing other state programs, but that isn’t going to solve the deficit. I also mentioned raising taxes, but how and on whom? Most of those avenues would have unintended consequences we don’t want either and won’t solve the budget crisis. We could try to bring in new business. Duh. But to solve the problems of the state we are going to have to bring in manufacturing on a massive scale. For that to work, we’d have to revamp our infrastructure to support it, and then we would still be cut rate compared to the natural competitive advantages for other parts of the country, or even planet, due to our geography. So even if we could solve that problem, it would be a few decades down the road before we saw the realized gain from it.We could also increase taxes. Everybody loves that. Except what good would it do? What we relied upon was income tax from all the people working the wells. Now the wells are in the ground and we don’t need the labor, so what good is an income tax increase? Tax the oil subsidies themselves? Maybe, but at some point, you drive out the business and you can dig shale in a lot of places other than Oklahoma. Just a note on history, Oklahoma used to be a world leader in the growing and manufacturing of cotton around the 1940’s and 1950’s. Not anymore. Wonder if there is something to be learned there. We could also amend the Oklahoma Constitution to allow for a higher real estate tax. That works great for Texas. I don’t know why we don’t here.Of course… we could also talk about illegal immigration.Above is a racial dot map of my town. Here, the Mexican population went from around 5% in 1970 to about 50% according to the 2010 census. That’s a massive shift and I am not even talking about the cultural consequences. Polling the Mexican students, which I’ve done because this topic comes up a lot, they acknowledge that probably about 25% of their Mexican counterparts are illegal immigrants. A few have admitted to it very openly. Look, I don’t care about what you think about culture or if you want to call all arguments you don’t like racist. When the raw numbers say that around 12.5% of your student population are illegal immigrants, some conversations need to start happening.First, how are they being paid for? Is the new business their parents are creating offsetting the cost to educate them? Usually not, as the costs per student were designed to also include income taxes, and when much of your income is illegally sourced and off the books, it’s rarely taxed. Also, what other services do they need? How about the fact that I have never seen a new Mexican student who spoke fluent English? Remember the fact that standardized tests determine a teacher’s value as an educator? Imagine if three of her twenty-five students don’t even speak the language she has to teach. So English as a Second Language (ESL) creates yet another budget problem, as there are almost no teachers qualified with the necessary certification to do it. For perspective, my wife just told me a recent meeting noted that more than 30% of our school currently rate some sort of ESL or ELL (English Language Learner) programs. These programs channels huge amounts of money to these children relative to what their native born students, both American and Mexican-American get to achieve the same education.People will call me racist for bringing this up. I’m not. I love these kids, as I’ve actually taught them where most activists consider them simple bargaining chips. I literally saw them every day. But when asked, by them, what I thought about illegal immigration, I made these same arguments, and then answered the question like this.“If your parents cared more about my kid then they cared about you, then they would be terrible parents. I’m just being honest. Who here could honestly say that they would care more about someone else’s kid than their own? None of you, right? That’s because you’re all decent people. Well, I’m not just a teacher. I’m a parent, and my daughter has to compete with people she shouldn’t have to. That’s not compete academically. She has to compete for funds and resources. She shouldn’t have to do that. Those of you who are legally here shouldn’t have to do that. But she will, and all of you will, and her chances later in life will suffer because of that.So I ask myself, ‘what would her chances be if 12.5% of the kids whose parents don’t honestly contribute as much as everyone else to the tax base, and who require extensive educational outlays just to break even, didn’t go to this school anymore?’ Honestly, I think it would be better for her. I think if we are honest with ourselves, I think that most of us know it would be better. But it requires an act of heartlessness. Now, remember what I said, if your parents cared more about my kid than they did about you… they would be terrible parents. Right?”So speaking as a Republican… and also as a parent of a future Oklahoma student… and as a former teacher whose seen the effects myself… there is one option I can’t help but mention, but it’s pretty heartless.Of course, there is a third option, and one I actually like… vouchers.School vouchers are a program where schools are forced to compete for students. Before I talk about that, I want to enlighten you on frustrations I personally have with Oklahoma education — the ridiculous amounts of money which go to programs that neither benefit all students nor have a statistically meaningful impact on most of their lives and future success (sports) and you have to ask questions about why the Science program is underfunded. You’d think after all the arguments I’ve made, they would have been gone ages ago. But it is ingrained in the culture. People have their greatest memories on the field, so they expect the schools to participate, and if they participate, they better win. So coaches have far more power to demand what they “need” then the merits of the program deserve. Seriously think about the cost of a football stadium being built and maintained each year, along with gymnasium, a softball and a baseball field, when only about three hundred kids use these facilities out of a school of only around 1,000 kids. That’s K-12, not just our High School. Now consider that there are only about 60 kids on the team.Also consider that that this brings about the necessary evil of Creatures. That’s my euphemism for Coach/Teachers. Some are the best teachers in the world are coaches, but far more are attempting to fulfill their failed aspirations of sports stardom by becoming a History teacher… which is why so many kids suck at History. Did I mention you get a not insignificant pay raise to be a Creature? I really want to stress that some of the Coach-Teachers are the best teachers I have ever known, but most simply suck as educators.Look, just to make the point even clearer, I’m going to source The Atlantic, which is something I never thought I would do. But they have a piece that hits extremely close to home on this one.Last year in Texas, whose small towns are the spiritual home of high-school football and the inspiration for Friday Night Lights, the superintendent brought in to rescue one tiny rural school district did something insanely rational. In the spring of 2012, after the state threatened to shut down Premont Independent School District for financial mismanagement and academic failure, Ernest Singleton suspended all sports—including football.To cut costs, the district had already laid off eight employees and closed the middle-school campus, moving its classes to the high-school building; the elementary school hadn’t employed an art or a music teacher in years; and the high school had sealed off the science labs, which were infested with mold. Yet the high school still turned out football, basketball, volleyball, track, tennis, cheerleading, and baseball teams each year.Football at Premont cost about $1,300 a player. Math, by contrast, cost just $618 a student. For the price of one football season, the district could have hired a full-time elementary-school music teacher for an entire year. But, despite the fact that Premont’s football team had won just one game the previous season and hadn’t been to the playoffs in roughly a decade, this option never occurred to anyone.“I’ve been in hundreds of classrooms,” says Singleton, who has spent 15 years as a principal and helped turn around other struggling schools. “This was the worst I’ve seen in my career. The kids were in control. The language was filthy. The teachers were not prepared.” By suspending sports, Singleton realized, he could save $150,000 in one year. A third of this amount was being paid to teachers as coaching stipends, on top of the smaller costs: $27,000 for athletic supplies, $15,000 for insurance, $13,000 for referees, $12,000 for bus drivers. “There are so many things people don’t think about when they think of sports,” Singleton told me. Still, he steeled himself for the town’s reaction. “I knew the minute I announced it, it was going to be like the world had caved in on us.”The Case Against High-School SportsLook, I like school sports as a concept. I played all the way, and it may have even helped me personally. Of course, a lot more of that I credit with the Marines Corps, where many of my boot camp buddies never took a step on the grass. That aside, Oklahoma, and many other parts of the nation, have simply taken it too far. Spending for it has gone beyond any possible investment value, and now exists in a cannibalistic relationship with the Math, English, History, and woe unto thine humble arts program.That’s why I advocate for vouchers. I want this to sink in, I am a former public school teacher married to a current public school teacher, arguing for vouchers. Listen to what I have to say.Vouchers allow for the creation of charter schools in areas that are too poor to afford the high tuition of private schools. Vouchers break down the total budget of a district to the student, saying very coldly that if there are 1000 students in a district, each child is worth 0.1% of the budget. If the school’s budget is $3,000,000, then the child rates $3,000 of those dollars as funds that the locality and state are willing to put toward their education. With a voucher, a parent can transfer their student and take those dollars as the tuition for the charter school. This removes the funds from the public school, which is where competition comes into play. If numerous charters are allowed to open, it will mean that the public school will have a funding crisis, as they will have the exact same costs for their facilities, but lose too many students as a share of the total population to keep them funded.Frankly, I’m okay with that.I feel that this real crisis will force public schools, as well as charters, to evolve away from many of the practices that fail to make kids successful later in life. It will allow the charter schools to exist in an environment where new methods can be created free from the burdens of an impossible to manage state bureaucracy, and allow them to invest their funds more in line with the parents wishes where if they don’t want to fund a sports program eating up 40% of their kids’ tax dollars… they don’t have to. One positive outcome? Maybe the sports can stay. Forcing competition doesn’t mean that you close everything down to a husk. It means that you cut the fat and leave what works. If there are programs that encourage individual and team competition that actually translates to success of the community, awesome. My town has won State Championships in Cross Country three years in a row. All you need for that are running shoes. Sounds fair. But the cuts need to be made to bad programs for the schools to get back to actually educating children. Frankly, a lot of these small towns get in their own way by saving programs that don’t help their kids do better later in life. I feel that vouchers will help make that decision for them.So summing it all up, there’s a lot that can be done. A lot that needs to be done.We could raise taxes, but that will have a lot of costs associated with it, like driving out one of the last industries we have left.We could cannibalize other programs, which sucks but it is probably what we will have to settle with.We could deregulate education. I really wish we would, but that will do nothing for the state’s broader budget problems.We could actually enforce immigration policy, which we should.Or we can open up market incentives that will force the responses from schools to make better choices themselves.Most of my suggestions are conservative in nature, and all of them are going to hurt a lot. Most of the problems, though, aren’t Republican or Democrat in nature. Both parties worked together to make this situation. Even that’s not fair. Oklahoma just got the geographical short end of the stick in a lot of ways. We’re just poor. I get that. Life isn’t fair. But there is still a lot we can do to solve the problem and blaming one side or the other simply doesn’t cut it.Thank you for reading. If you liked this answer, please upvote and follow The War Elephant. If you want to help me make more content like this, please support me by donating to my Patreon Support Page. All donations greatly appreciated!

Most people miss the mark in a question like this because they come from the wrong perspective. They look at price—-$40k in regards to TODAY—-as cash in your checking/savings account spent TODAY for education—-so most people don’t understand what education IS and what it COSTS.The student cost, per child, in America varies but settles at around $6000-$12,000 per child per school year through high school. The variance is based upon property taxes/additional monies invested into a child—-like through a charter school. Which is how you have the variance of good and not good school districts, in public schooling.Having worked for years, consulted and taught in public, charter, and private schools, from the K to 12 to university level AND taught teachers how to teach better in them all—-I can tell you that it’s Quality Outcomes Based Upon Investment.In an average public school—let’s call it $8k a year per child, you have Basic to Intermediate Teachers; at a well funded charter/parochial/mid level private, Intermediate. When I teach those teachers they’re generally in three categories:Starters (New Mutants )—-under 3–5 years—-most quitting before 3 years. We really don’t take them seriously as having made a career choice until they surpass 3 years and go into 5 years. If you get past 5 years as a teacher, you’re generally able to do it for a lifetime. Most of the teachers quit before 3–5 because they were doing something that “looks” easy and is generally something directly out of college someone can do in a licensing matter, pretty fast. (Under 60 days, generally over the summer through August) and secure a job making $30–50k (science and math) immediately that September. Public schools generally have mandates to fill positions (I teach principals how to choose teachers as well) so this means that often temporary or bad apples get rolled in due to time constrictions.Possible Careers are your teachers who generally move into Administration of schools—-they teach well enough to be Intermediates but have other managerial, curriculum design, extra skill (special education, reading, math expertise, ESL) so they are able to go into specialty lanes in teaching. Specialization takes about 1–2 years to perfect and start getting into the groove of so if you spot and like it early then some of that 3-5 years of New Mutants time, gets eaten up and you progress.Career Teachers-(X-Men) generally like/love teaching and grow into the role itself and if they’re in a supportive career environment will stay, even if the students, teaching itself, is challenging. They came in, generally slightly older than a college graduate/second career so they’re able to make a more informed choice.Advanced Teachers (X-Men) are generally super stars who feel it’s a form of a calling/vocation and are in it, period. For life. They tend to be or become experts in their field and they teach as a way of progressing that knowledge, testing out new theories, or bluntly, getting a paycheck from teaching, while they enhance their expertise. Teaching then becomes the agreed upon addition for the space to do something that can be taught—-an ouroboros that sort of eats itself and fulfills itself. One of my mentoring professors, Raymond Federman, that whom I TA’ed for, gave me the personal/professional advice to do two things to become a writer: get married and work for a university teaching—-both were supportive systems to allow one to write professionally.Now here’s the kicker—-as I mentioned before I not only teach teachers to teach better but I also teach school administrators, after a deep evaluation of their school, how to choose better teachers. Then in the initial professional development—-I try to go in and maintain the structural guidance for the school to maintain a vision along what materials (teacher skills) we have and the principal’s vision. For an example there was a school that wanted to do their school along the lines of Stephen Covey’s 7 Habits so in the hiring and design, we focused on it as much as possible—— and I just happen to have taught it for years—-aligning to other projects. They were trying to turn their small middle school—-only a few hundred students, into an elite “academy”.Another school I worked with, had a great Dean, who rose to principal, who separated the children by sex and worked intensively on the teachers teaching along values, morals, manhood and womanhood along with academic subjects. The kids would mingle in recess and lunch but went back into their segmented groups. it did very well, he wrote a book about it. He was a Career-Advanced teacher/administrator.Private Schools costing $40k or more—-there are several here in NYC, one of them a lot of the Columbia faculty/administrators send their children to—-is about the fact that those children are being taught by Career-Advanced Teachers.Just as there are Assessments for children grade by grade and career assessments for people in general, there are educational-teaching assessment programs. At the charter school I worked at, I helped set it up.You submitted your resume and were emailed a link.You set up an account, put in all of your data and then went through a multi-hour assessment that essentially weeded out all the Starters and Possibles. Yes, that might mean that a Starter or Possible who will/would become an Advanced was lost in the sauce but that’s not the point. We were willing to lose 2 to avoid hiring 10–50 and having to lose 6–35 within 1-5 years, which is what happens without a deep assessment upfront. And that translates to dollars.Those saved dollars, even from tuition, are then repurposed back into turning High Potentials into Advanceds and THAT is where a portion of the money goes over time. If I help hire the right 10 teachers for a small school at average $60k a year private school—-that’s $3 million in 5 years. With perhaps only a 10% turnover and replacement in that 5 years. The classes are then more stable, the teachers more of a team and their salaries can constantly be increased. Unfortunately the closest model is a corporatized model but it works—-when teachers are given the materialism-time-agenda and purposefully engaged students-parents, to create Advanced Students.What is an Advanced Student?When I was in the 4th grade, my mother’s best friend found a great duplex apartment in her building for us, including my father, so we moved in and I went to the public school within the complex—-think small village. But for the 5th grade I was transferred to the Catholic school across the street from our village, with my mother’s best friends kids, which was deeply ironic because my father was a Muslim and I was given the choice of wearing a kufi to school. I did. And when the nuns questioned it, I told them I was bring back the Crusades! lolFast forward to my freshman year of a public high school, we had moved to suburban New Jersey and sitting in my first science class I was surprised and slightly aghast. I politely raised my hand.“This science book is the same one I had in the 5th grade; there must be a mistake.”The science teacher said that was impossible, I insisted he was wrong. He insisted that I was a child. I nodded politely.It was the same science book. I was an Advanced Student in a Basic public school.What Makes An Advanced Student? IIMy parents met in college—she was at Baruch studying Psychology, French and Dance and my father was at Pace studying Political Science. We owned books. I can’t remember when my mother taught me chess (around 3) but it was the first question my father asked of her when they got back together when I was 10.Advanced Students come from Advanced Students. For their time, their family structures and their ages and careers after school—-my parents were Advanced for Black people. My mother was the only one of her siblings to go to college past a few courses for work; my father and his brother came up north to attend college together.What Makes an Advanced Student? IIISocial professor Annette Lareau outlines two child raising techniques that influence a child’s future, that most parents do and don’t recognize or don’t do and don’t recognize."Concerted cultivation" is the type of childrearing that middle class parents practice. This childrearing practice consists of parents participating in the organization of their child's afterschool activities and providing a structured life for their child. The parents generally have a better education and try to impress this upon their child on a daily basis. Parents teach their children things that are not taught in school that will help them to perform better and get better grades on tests and ultimately do better in school. The main advantage to this type of childrearing is that children are taught lessons through organized activities that help prepare them for a white collar job and the types of interactions that a white-collar worker encounters. Some examples of this type of parental teaching is engagement in critical thinking such as asking challenging questions, the use of advanced grammar, and help a stronger family support structure. The main disadvantage of concerted cultivation is that often the child becomes bored easily and cannot entertain themselves."The Accomplishment of Natural Growth" is the type of childrearing that working class and poor parents practice, and not necessarily by choice. They are less involved with the structure of their child’s after school activities and generally have less education and time to impress values upon their children that will give them an advantage in school. This type of childrearing involves less organized activities and more free time for their children to play with other children in the neighborhood.I point this out because when I’m assessing children—-I’m also checking along these guidelines because it’s a predictor of not something as simplistic as their future—but like seeds—-what they need as healthy soil and fertilizer to succeed. By succeed I don’t mean get such and such job—-I mean succeed in a malleable, capable sense that means—-they can CHOOSE how and what to become.I often tell my students and teachers—-all age ranges—-I don’t pointedly care (as in emotional attachment) to what you directly become in title—-that’s a banal, obtuse reductive measurement—-I am deeply concerned that you become someone who can become what they want to and enjoy.In her AMAZING work, Unequal Childhoods:Lareau shows how middle-class parents, whether black or white, engage in a process of "concerted cultivation" designed to draw out children's talents and skills, while working-class and poor families rely on "the accomplishment of natural growth," in which a child's development unfolds spontaneously―as long as basic comfort, food, and shelter are provided. Each of these approaches to childrearing brings its own benefits and its own drawbacks. In identifying and analyzing differences between the two, Lareau demonstrates the power, and limits, of social class in shaping the lives of America's children.That’s what you’re getting additionally for that $40k a year—-a teacher who like the best medical surgeons in the world in their area of expertise, knows how to perform, enact and extract concerted cultivation of a student. The teachers at a Private school, Advanced themselves, similar to the majority of the parents, continue the Advancing mentality, exercises, thought processes, etc. that the parents are girding at home. Think of it as an uninterrupted line of train tracks from one side of the country to another.Now, consider parents who may not be Advanced themselves, or some sort of home that doesn’t have two parents—-wonderfully Advanced children come from those homes, yes BUT they do so because: Advanced Students come from Advanced Students.What a private school/university does is it insures that Advanced Students come from Advanced Students by making it perfectly possible in the environment to only associate with other Advanced Students and they are taught by Advanced Students who have become Advanced Teachers.The rest of the tuition goes to the Future, directly.What Makes an Advanced Student? IVIn the course of my consulting around NYC, I get to see lots of schools and more importantly lots of differing methodology for teaching. One such school, lead by a principal who worked for 20 years in high finance on Wall Street—-is the epitome of a Public school taught at a Private School mentality/resources. He went and got resources to retrofit the entire school so all of the classrooms are not just the physical books and toys and such, but also have iPads for every teacher that link into a full system of laptops/PCs for the children. For each student. And large screen Smart Boards.He also assessed and hired teachers based upon Advanced Career standards and regularly had an integrated parental system that taught them what their children were doing and how to assist. One of the bonuses of how he was able to implement this so easily was that it was an elementary school so the children “grew”—-were cultivated—- into a framework of learning (as were their parents).Combining all of these factors is why schools that cost so much, produce what they do (unless there are serious issues with a student) and those students seamlessly go into the world and maintain a lot of the infrastructure, some of them popping out as superstars.Their Teachers were Advanced so they could answer not simply the question posed but higher level questions, with ideas and theories and more importantly, identify and cultivate gifted students faster. Imagine Michael Phelps was the swim coach at your kids’ school—-would they be better swimmers? Why? Because he’s Advanced.Their schools themselves were Advanced in that the materials are generally as much as 5 “grades” higher than public schools so the complexity of the information is far superior. Imagine Dostoevsky tackled in the 6th grade or being regularly taken to the planetarium with a ceiling screen? Or reading high school books, like normal, in Middle school? Or even lower in Elementary school? (I worked at a charter school where the students in K to 5 were studying Japanese—-when children are the most absorbent f new languages.)Their parents are generally Advanced enough to maintain concerted cultivation, the OTHER 128 hours, of a child’s week. There’s generally for children, after public school,—removing eating, travel and sleep—- 50–60 free hours—-spent online, texting, video games. It’s not that private school children don’t do these things it’s that their time is lessened or more complexity supported and their engagement of the materials deeper—-building cell phones, coding, building video games, designing graphics (with their retrofitted computer labs/personal computers.)The school is designed to be Advanced. Computers/laptops for every student; integrated computer interaction and monitoring of students—-so that they can move at their own pace and teachers can focus on helping those lagging behind because it’s identified who is lagging behind. Most public schools are “slower” because teachers are forced by physical-verbal means to slow their classes down to the median intelligence or understanding of their students. Of 30 students—-if 10 get it and move on—-they have to sit and wait for the other 20 to catch up because public school—-regimented and regulated by a state/federal guideline called the Core Curriculum,—- has very distinct barriers around “grades/gradation of knowledge.”Private schools charge so much more directly because they essentially pull out all of the weeds in school and simply cultivate learning and knowledge and hire experts to do so. They then have the time and resources to privately tutor or assist or have multiple assistant teachers to help students lagging behind AND they generally have homework classes/programs so that people who are advanced in knowledge areas—-science, trigonometry, language arts assist them directly rather than going home to parents who may not be able to do so. In effect, creating an Advanced Teacher buddy-parenting-teaching system through all of their grades.Social Class InvestmentFinally, $40,000 isn’t money. It’s an investment, a social class investment.On average low end, a child costs $10,000 a year to feed, clothe, shelter, educate——on the median/high end $25,000.I stand sometimes at Columbia in front of classes, students, or go to schools populated with Advanced Teachers, and the students aren’t so much of what we would consider “better” but they do think faster and better and deeper. And they’re all bundled together—-so that they, particularly Ivy league students, get the 5th, deeply important benefit, similar to my parents—-they friendship, mate, sex —-with other Advancers. If you can push your child that far—-for a few more thousand a year—you can insure what happens, hopefully in a progressive system—-your child will Advance in Social Class—-which isn’t simply money.Social class advancement IS the point of school in all of its’ forms.Normally, each following generation, advances one level higher than the preceding one but Middle Class and lower tend to have an imposed gravity to them.Think of it like the Kuiber Asteroid Belt. All the inner planets are Middle Class, Working Class and Poverty.18% of people in Poverty ($10-$18k a year as an individual or family of 4) will get out of it in one generation and advance to Middle Class. Such a small number is why Poverty is so persistent and even doing things like increasing the minimum wage won’t help. Poverty is not simply money. A lot of my students in classes that are vocational or GED or such, directly from Poverty tend to do things that maintain their staying in Poverty—-create a gravity well—-they have children before 30, they don’t marry their partner, they don’t finish high school, etc..30% of Working Class ($18-$30k a year as an individual or family of 4) will propel to the next level—-this is generally because one is closer to the tools, strategies and advancement techniques of the Middle Class (think home ownership, 401k plans, stock investment, educational attainment, mentorship, military service (the biggest propellant from Working Class to Middle Class in the 20th century).Less than 30% of Middle Class ($36-$250,000k a year as an individual or family of 4) “move” because of multiple factors but the major one is a sort of cultural gravity—-you’ve made it—-generally farther than your parents and grandparents so you don’t push to double down and risk your spot to make it to the next level. You stay in the $50-$250,000k a year jobs/careers as parents and you thoughtfully make a long term plan for your 1 or 2 children (my parents decided to only have one child because they thought, rightfully so that they could do more for me than for more children. My aunts had 3 and 7 kids and my uncle 4—-only 2 of them are Middle Class.) In MC you make decisions about what you can and cannot do against the “gravity” of your social class.What you might see though is that you can choose to hold your MC level and push your kids firmly into the next stratosphere Upper Middle Class (at least) or Rich to Wealthy—-they’ll become different than you because they will go places, learn from Advanced people, visit Advanced places in form and mentality—-so you opt for private school.And you push them past the Kuiber belt, half knowing that it will be difficult or near impossible for them to return to the inner planets and they’ll simply have to expand “out there” within a system you may not completely be a member of.You look at the numbers and realize for less cable TV, less dinners out, less new clothes, no PS5, staying in a starter home 10 years longer—-you can finance $500k over 15–20 years—-just like you would a new home but that will propel your children into a stratosphere where they will be able to do more, easier.If you’re already past the Kuiber Belt, it’s natural. But if you’re within Poverty, Working Class, Middle Class—you find a way to pay $40k a year (a spouses’ salary, working OT, advancing yourself to a job that gives you some extra money, living below your means, even forestalling a robust retirement savings, living with family/parents/grandparents) for their education because education (and subsequent inheritance—-like from the equity in real estate/insurance policy) bring about the knowledge and network to move freely in the human solar system…and beyond. And that is often the difference between choice and slavery.Or staying a New Mutant and becoming one of the X-Men.#KylePhoenix#TheKylePhoenix